High-Tech PR Blog >> Beyond the Hype

DEMO Time at LP&P

It was DEMO '08 audition time in our Boston office last week.  Executive producer Chris Shipley was kind enough to spend the day in our offices meeting with our clients to determine if their offerings are strong enough to merit inclusion in the February DEMO conference.  Chris has done this for us -- our version of "A Chorus Line" -- every year for many years, usually in Boston, but once in our Austin office.  It has been great for our clients, whom we prescreen and advise regarding how best to present themselves for DEMO consideration.  A high percentage of them have made the cut over the years and we feel optimistic that this year will be no exception.  Even the companies who were not quite ready for DEMO have gotten a lot out of the meetings with Chris.  Since she spends the bulk of her time traveling the globe meeting with all of the innovative companies in the industry, she brings a wealth of great insights and perspectives which never fail to help them in their planning and development. 

Chris also met with our Boston team for an interactive Q&A session.  We have gotten a number of questions about the TechCrunch 40 conference, which is challenging DEMO, so it was helpful to hear directly from Chris about DEMO and the market in general.  Chris was characteristically straightforward about Michael Arrington's new entry into the conference industry.  Essentially she seems to be happy not to be shadow-boxing any more.  Now it's about execution.  The DEMO conference group always has made it look easy, but it certainly isn't.  Chris is watching to see how well the new group can rise to the challenge. 

And then there is the leadership issue.  Arrington and Shipley could not be more different.  The former has been amazing leveraging and leading the Web 2.0 and social media movements, but has done it with a strong self-promotional bent and a distinct Silicon Valley focus.  Chris Shipley is probably one of the most self-effacing conference leaders in the industry's history.  It's not about her, everything she does and says seems to suggest; it's about the value the conference provides to DEMO participants.  Does she need to be more visible in the blogosphere?  I think so.  But is her focus in the wrong place regarding her ultimate customers -- the DEMO attendees?  I don't think so.

Our Boston-based team collected some great quotes from Chris Shipley during her visit here:

• On the current risk of a new bubble:  "I think it's froth; it's not a bubble."
• On the difference between Silicon Valley tech companies and East Coast tech companies:  ". . . the further from Silicon Valley [you get], the more practical the apps become."
• On the money front:  "it's a challenging time to be a vc."

Thanks again to Chris for giving us her time last week.  We look forward to seeing her -- and some of our clients -- at DEMO in February.   

It's official: The Industry Standard is coming back

During the session at the Future of Business Media Conference on technology business media, Bob Carrigan, president of IDG Communications confirmed that the organization is bringing back The Industry Standard.  The details are that a group of InfoWorld folks are developing social media platform to do predictions of what's going to happen in the market and using the brand that has a lot of history.  There's a parallel effort now to build in advertising and promotion, and IDG is looking to hire an editor.  In essence, it's being brought back mainly in blog form, emulating the GigaOm and TechCrunch models.

I found it somewhat ironic considering other blog posts I read today on the topic of the Web 2.0 bubble.  Of all of the publications that celebrated the last bubble, The Industry Standard probably was the most raucous -- the rooftop parties, the 300+ pages of ads, etc.  So is this another landmark on the road towards another bubble?

Carrigan made it a point to say that it isn't.  The "announcement" came during a panel that talked a lot about how the winning formula for tech media going forward is going to be about giving the audience a great experience at the intersection of community and content, with bloggers playing a big role. 

Others on the panel included Neil Ashe, CEO of CNET; Om Malik; and Greg Strakosch, CEO of TechTarget.  Each discussed what it is doing to expand its audience, with community being a very important aspect.  Approaches vary, but the consensus was that a community-driven approach with content that gives the tech audience much of what they need to make purchasing decisions is the model that makes the most sense going forward. 

Om Malik described GigaOm as an adjunct to the traditional properties like the IDG books and CNET.  As he says:

They do one form of media, we do something more in tune with today's time.  Many people want information quickly in a fast food fashion.  We do that.  The others provide the entrees and last I checked, the fast food industry is doing well.  And so are establishments that serve great entrees.

The point he's making is that there's still room for blog-based outlets alongside traditional ones, as long as the content is good, and the bloggers behind the sites are effective in connecting with its audience and facilitating conversation.  Does that mean that there's room for the Industry Standard, especially in an environment that challenges everyone's attention?  Perhaps, but we'll have to wait to see if it's content and community offer something not already available.

Liveblogging from The Future of Business Media

I'm in New York City today at the Future of Business Media event put on by the ContentNext organization.  I was drawn because of the very specific focus on how business and trade media is changing because of social media and consolidation.  The agenda is packed with top people from such organizations as Time Inc., Forbes, BusinessWeek, Conde Nast, Dow Jones, Reuters, CNBC, along with a lunchtime Q&A with Neil Cavuto.  It should give some great insights into where the traditional media properties are going in the new "world order" and where the opportunities will exist for our clients and prospects in technology.

Kicking off the morning is Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com and Roger McNamee, Managing Director of Elevation Partners, a private equity partnership focused on media, and an investor in Forbes.com.   

Forbes has been unique since the formation of Forbes.com in 1997 in the fact that it runs its Web outlet completely separate from its magazine.  In effect, its philosophy is that the web audience is completely different from its magazine readers, so it approaches advancing Forbes.com in a separated fashion from the magazine.  The magazine can only offer a fraction of what the broadest audience needs, so it's best to separate the two so the print issues don't hold back the web version.  Jim commented on how it views the web now:

The web is not a form of media, it's a platform to provide several media formats [text, audio, video, interactivity] in the same place.  The brand is analogous to its offline companion and is separate.  Forbes.com is not Forbes magazine online, it is its own entity that we want people to go to independent of the magazine.

Jim described how Forbes.com delivers on two types of stories, "wide aperture" (lifestyle-focused) and "narrow aperture" (focused deeply on very specific topics that provide great value to different profiles of readers).  It currently has 20 million uniques on a monthly basis.

Roger commented further on Forbes.com's view of the web, saying that it is a great way of bringing together not just the data, but the interpretation of it and interaction around it.  He also commented on other magazines' redesigning print to look more "webby", saying that it's not about how it looks but what it says. The web audience is different from the magazine audience, so redesigning the magazine will hurt the web audience.

What this is really about is that the web is a completely different business model, and any company that holds onto the old model and ties the two together are not going to do well.  For WSJ, it's not an issue of making WSJ.com for free, it's about tying the Web content to the newspaper too tightly.

Responding to a question on how Forbes.com views video, Jim described it as extremely important to them now.  The role video plays is giving Forbes.com a lot of flexibility to give its audience different degrees of consumption depending on how involved the reader is in a subject.  More and more people are oriented toward video content of the site, and Jim feels that people "will think of the video on our site along with other forms of content like a business cable channel."

Next up (via a short video interview) was Ann Moore, Chairman and CEO, Time Inc., who commented immediately on the decision to close Business 2.0.  It was an economic one -- it didn't have enough advertising, so it was more important to shutter it and beef up the coverage in Fortune.  The whole business sector has been hit hard, with ad dollars being taken away by automotive books and women and lifestyle magazines overall.  Moore described the partnership with CNN (consolidating business titles to CNNMoney) has been very successful -- adding profits to bottom lines of each of the titles. 

Interestingly, echoing Jim Spanfeller's view of video, Anne stated how people don't need a cable channel anymore, because Time Inc. does video very well on its site.  Video is easy to produce in multiple locations and cheap distribution.  Video has tripled its CPM's and readers.

I'll blog about additional sessions in separate posts, as there's an interesting panel with the major "consumer business magazines", a Q&A with the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a panel on technology business media during the day.

Social Media: Same Business, Different Distribution

Last night we held our annual Austin networking event and we had the pleasure of hosting Om Malik as our featured guest speaker.  If there is anyone that has the credibility to comment on where social media is going - it's Om.  As one of the most reputable business technology journalists in the industry, Om had the foresight more than five years ago to circumvent publishing outlets and start publishing his work online.  I remember at the time when he told me he had started doing this and thinking, "oh, he's doing some sort of online newsletter."  I was a little off.

Now he's running one of the most successful blogging media companies to date and everyone in the industry is watching to see how the model will work.  His take on social media is this: Traditional media has not given writers the freedom they need to deliver brilliant and timely work.

"Traditional media is not letting their writers be free," he explained.  So writers are seeing the light in because. For example, Om said when he first started his blog, his overhead was essentially a $9.95 Yahoo! monthly Yahoo account.

"Moore's Law has finally hit the newsroom," he stated.  He then went on to explain that the economics of printing has collapsed.  But he sees this shift in media as helping the overall information industry.

"Who wants to eat Cheerios everyday?" If there are more focused writers online covering topics they know inside and out, there will be a higher caliber of information available for society to learn about technologies and companies (or whatever topic they choose to follow).

And when it comes to the standard question about accuracy and accountability, he made a good point. It's in the hands of the reader of who they are going to trust, be it a larger media figure such as Rush Limbaugh, or a blogger such as Michael Arrington.

In the end, he explained, each figure is responsible for their own content and it's more important who the individual writer is versus the outlet or blog they are writing for. People have choice of who they are going to listen to, regardless of who the person works for.

He then commented on something that has continued to be a fierce debate in PR circles.  He explained that corporate communications and the PR industry will essentially continue to function in the same way as it always has, in terms of reaching out to its influencers. The PR discipline will monitor and build relationships with the voices that make an impact on the industry and help them understand how their clients fit into the overall market.

"This is only the first inning of the World Series," Om said.  There will be many more changes ahead in publishing world, but when you boil it down, it really is "the same business, different distribution."

By the way, for those wondering, Om is a Yankees fan.

So when do I get my check from Facebook?

No surprise the big business tech news story today is Microsoft's investment in Facebook.  There is a lot of speculation on how this impacts Microsoft's ability to compete with Google.

Oh, and it also means that Facebook now how has a valuation of $15B. Given they made $30M last year that means ... Oh gosh you know what it means! The bubble is back baby!!!!  Start lighting up those cigars with hundred dollar bills!

While Facebook has some great technology, Microsoft is most interested it as an advertising platform, particularly overseas. The value that Facebook provides is in the personal data that its users provide.  But right now Facebook has 50 million active users -- meaning each is now valued at about $30 million. Oh sure, you have to look at the revenue stream that Facebook has from other sources, but still that is quite a price per user even if you quarter it to $7.5M to account for future users.

I truly believe that Social Media is a disruptive force, but I have to wonder if this valuation is sane. I keep thinking of all the "eyeball" talk that drove the valuations in the first bubble.

By the way Facebook owners, I am Facebook member. Do you think you guys could spread the wealth to the folks who made you successful? I have some cigars from 1999 that are just waiting to be lit up.

UPDATE: As the reader of our blog points out below my math is off. I am only worth $300 to Facebook. According to pundit John Dvorak that is still a high premium.

Getting Social in Austin

What's great about having two offices is that you really can see how a corporate culture is consistent, but with a specific local flavor for each location.  Our Austin team is right in the heart of downtown Austin, a block from famous 6th Street.  The social nature of Austin comes through loud and clear whenever I visit, as we'll walk to various places for "happy hours" with our clients there rather than just have meetings.  (You haven't lived until you've had fried pickles, by the way.)

The social nature of Austin is blending with social media in Austin this evening.  Our office is very excited to be hosting well-respected journalist Om Malik who has become one of the technology industry's most well-known bloggers.  His GigaOM blog is well read by our clients.  Our team is looking forward to hearing his insights about how communications and the media are changing in our sector with the emergence of blogs.  If you live in Austin and have not signed up for this event, contact our Austin office and please do plan to join the team at Whole Foods headquarters downtown.  Details are in a release the office just distributed.

Whither SNW?

Last week marked another Storage Networking World Conference (SNW).  This time, the conference was held at the Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel and Convention Center near Dallas, in Grapevine, Texas.  Billed as the "world's largest and foremost storage networking event," SNW has become more of a reunion of sorts for many in the storage industry, especially in the vendor community.  Although, finding out where former friends and colleagues end up transcends the vendor community as reporters and analysts take up new positions within publications and industry analyst firms that track the comings and goings in the storage industry.

As one reporter I spoke to who attended the conference noted, "it was like Vegas only without the casino."

Each Spring and Fall, SNW USA along with IDG and the Storage Networking Industry Association, and thousands of vendor representatives and executives, media, analysts and end users converge on venues in Phoenix, Orlando, San Diego, and now Grapevine, Texas.

The hope is as SNW promotes:

You can choose from over 140 educational sessions and network with peers from around the globe-plus visit with top solutions providers in the world's largest Expo and Solutions Center focused on storage.

With the power of the industry behind it, more vendor booths and more Tchotchkes to collect than a kid in a candy store would know what to do with, why does it feel like SNW is a shell of its former self?

Perhaps as Mary Jander from Byte and Switch appropriately pointed out in SNW in Pictures, the venue has taken on a turf war feel between conference organizers going to bat for sponsoring exhibitors and the non-sponsoring storage industry representatives whose clientele weed through agenda topics to find the right one to justify the trip and three plus days out of the office.  This Fall, though, the turf war got downright nasty.  So much so in fact, that as one reporter told me, company representatives were either escorted from areas they weren't welcome or asked to leave the conference altogether.  In large part, because in a variation of the words made immortal by Gold Hat in the 1948 film, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, they did indeed need "stinkin' badges."  We won't name names here to protect the innocent.

Rather than strong-arming individuals out of the conference, a courteous reminder to review the Conference FAQ probably would have sufficed.  Or, perhaps, conference organizers might insure that the press room is used for just that, press meetings, rather than sponsoring company sit downs for executives that weren't on the ball to get a suite.  But that's a post for another day.

Regardless, SNW is at a crossroads.  With vendor companies asked to justify value and ROI more than ever before on marketing and PR dollars and with IT travel budgets curtailed so end users are forced to choose between fewer venues to attend, SNW is competing with both vendor-sponsored end user conferences and shorter, tightly-packed conferences liked those hosted by TechTarget.  As such, SNW needs to find a way to re-establish itself as one of, if not the pre-eminent storage conferences it has long promoted.

If it doesn't, it will continue to be an easy target for the likes of Jon Toigo and others, who continue to question the value end-users gain by attending.

I, for one, am hoping that SNW can re-emerge.  If things don't change, however, then as one reporter who attended mentioned to me, "this conference runs the risk of being more of a snorage than storage event."

How Twitter is being used by the media

As I noted a little while ago, a specific area of the media evolution that I'm following is how traditional media is leveraging Twitter to inform its audiences.  A great example is in the context of the horrible wildfires in southern California.  Local public broadcasting station KPBS is using Twitter to give literally up to the minute updates on the numerous fires and their impact on public safety. 

Many media outlets have opened up Twitter streams to reach the surging numbers of people on the social network.  However, given how widespread the firestorm is and the number of people and properties at risk, Twitter makes for the ideal "channel" for news updates.  Given the number of fires, their size and impact on such a large and populous area, there is an enormous amount of information, and the existing vehicles of the KPBS web site and broadcast channels are very limited in terms of the amount and frequency of information that can be conveyed.  Twitter, on the other hand, allows information to be disseminated in true real-time.  For example, just checking the stream showed a "post" from 20 seconds ago about schools being closed tomorrow.  Others tell people not to use their cell phones, or how contained (or not) certain fires are.

For myself, following this stream puts the gravity and scope of the situation in much starker perspective than CNN ever could.  My thoughts are with everyone there.

Brand Management, Yankee Style

Because it’s well known that I am a Red Sox fanatic and own not one, but two, Yankee Hater hats (full disclosure of my biases), one of our folks forwarded me David Kiley’s piece in BusinessWeek entitled "Steinbrenner: A study in how Not to Build a Personal Brand."  One of Kiley’s frustrations was Steinbrenner’s refusal to talk directly to the media, preferring instead to go through his publicist with statements.  That didn’t concern me, as it is known he hasn’t been well and he may even be getting medical advice not to engage directly with the media.  But Kiley also referenced Steinbrenner’s statement, through his publicist, that declared manager Joe Torre would be let go if the Yankees didn’t beat the Cleveland Indians in the division series. 

All of us here in Boston know how that one turned out, as we’re now facing the Indians.  Lots of us have been frustrated – more than frustrated – by some of the decisions made by our team’s manager and general manager in the ALCS, where our backs are to the wall for the next two games.  We could not imagine our front office management coming out with a statement like Steinbrenner’s in the middle of this tough series.  It would not be a smart communications move and certainly wouldn’t motivate the team to produce.

The follow-up to all of this is a study in communications blunders, in my humble opinion.    After days of silence regarding Torre’s fate, he was all over the news yesterday.  During a three hour weather delay at an airport, I had plenty of time to watch the news break about Torre turning down the one-year contract he was finally offered, and then swirl out of control.  There were stats about Torre’s success as Yankees manager.  There was video footage of him that demonstrated his great relationship with players whose contracts are now up.  None of the coverage was positive for the Yankees management or the Yankees brand.

Phil Rogers summed it up nicely in Chicagosports.com with his article, “Cold Yankees look bad in Torre fiasco”.  He said the insulting low-ball offer to the respected manager will haunt the team in the long run

Offering the highly respected, highly successful Joe Torre only a one-year contract extension, at a pay cut of almost 30 percent at that, after he took his team to the playoffs for the 12th year in a row was a gutless way to get rid of him.

Yes, Torre turned down a chance to remain with the Yankees for $5 million plus incentives. But leaving him twisting in the wind for 10 days, after stirring the pot with a provocative George Steinbrenner quote that prompted reporters essentially to camp on his lawn, was the passive-aggressive way of making a decision.

Now Torre himself has spoken, in a news conference covered by Bloomberg:

Joe Torre said he was insulted when he rejected a one-year contract offer loaded with performance bonuses to keep managing the New York Yankees.

He said the package, with a base salary of $5 million, would have put too much pressure on himself and his players.

Torre told a news conference today that the offer emphasized future performance after he had led the Yankees to the Major League Baseball playoffs in all 12 years as manager, including four World Series championships.

"I'd been there 12 years and did not feel motivation was needed,'' Torre, 67, said at Rye, New York. "I didn't think it was the right thing for me or the right thing for my players.''

The Yankee organization is looking even worse.  And Brian Cashman had to admit he is now starting to look for a replacement.  I guess there was not a Plan B during that long period of indecision about Torre.  So as they interview people or get turned down, the story will continue to swirl.  And when Torre accepts another assignment, the whole thing will be rehashed again.  And when the players who are becoming free agents refuse to sign up because of his departure, the Yankees brand will take it on the chin again.

Does the Yankee organization really think this was a smart move heading into 2008, the last year of the current Yankee Stadium that will see the Bronx icon hosting the All Star Game?  We Red Sox fans had to deal with the Curse of the Bambino until we finally won the World Series in 2004 (after soundly beating the Yankees in the ALCS, by the way – perhaps the start of management’s disenchantment with Torre).  It seems to me that the ghost of Joe Torre and this very disrespectful way of dealing with a long-time, highly revered (even by some of us in Red Sox Nation) baseball manager and player will haunt the Yankees for many years.  As a Red Sox fan, I love the disruption it may cause our foes, although I'll miss hearing Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe" as Torre makes his slow walk to the mound to yank (pun intended) one of his pitchers.  As a communications professional, I can only ask:  "what the heck were they thinking?"

More evidence of reliability of blogs

I'm always on the look-out for information and commentary on how consumers trust blogs relative to traditional media.  The latest evidence comes from the Technorati report earlier this year, which showed that the number of non-mainstream blogs (meaning blogs not on traditional media sites) cracking the top 100 blogs is increasing.  Based upon how Technorati ranks blogs, does this suggest that consumers are less discriminating about where they go for their information?

In a story on Australian News.com.au, Graeme Samuel, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission commented that this may be the case.

"User-testing in early 2007 indicated to those carrying out Technorati's survey that audiences are less and less likely to distinguish a blog from, say, nytimes.com or other mainstream media sites," he said.

"For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources."

This evidence is consistent with the fact that mainstream media outlets have increased the amount of blogs they host, as well as why new "publications" that are launching are doing so in blog format.

With mounting evidence that blogs are becoming more trustworthy sources of information, it's imperative to have an active blog monitoring and blogger relations program in place.